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Jo Becker on the Moment that Mattered to the Vice President

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Jo Becker on the Moment that Mattered to the Vice President

By Jeannie Choi April 16, 2014 10:56 amApril 16, 2014 10:56 am

Photo

Credit Photograph from Michael Lombardo and Sonny Ward.

Accompanying Jo Becker’s cover story this week about the evolution of President Obama’s view on same-sex marriage is a never-before-seen photograph of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. with Johnny and Josie Ward-Lombardo during a party at the home of their parents, Sonny Ward and Michael Lombardo in 2012. Biden was there to meet with a group of prominent gay Democrats.

When the vice president was asked to share his personal views on marriage equality by Chad Griffin, a political operative at the event, Biden talked about the two children he had just met. Becker writes: “Biden stood up, flipped his bar stool around so that the back was between him and the rest of the guests and then straddled it. He looked almost pained, Griffin said. ‘I look at those two beautiful kids,’ Biden began. ‘I wish everybody could see this. All you got to do is look in the eyes of those kids. And no one can wonder, no one can wonder whether or not they are cared for and nurtured and loved and reinforced.’ ”

Becker explains how she was able to get the photograph for publication.

How did you discover the existence of this photo?

Obviously I was aware of the event itself and the importance of the event in the vice president’s mind, so I reached out to Mr. Lombardo to see whether there was a photograph. He had this wonderful photograph of his kids playing with the vice president. The two kids are showing him something on a cellphone, and they had been playing outside just before.

Why do you think this picture matters? What does it signify?

Well I think that what matters is that it mattered to the vice president. He talked about it with me, about being in that home, being with kids. And like one of his staff members said, his hard drive got erased. He’d been answering the question about same-sex marriage the same way for years. But having just played with this couple’s kids, when Chad Griffin asked him the question, the vice president just talked about how if anybody could see what was happening in this household, with those kids, there wouldn’t be any doubt.

What did the vice president tell you about that moment?

In his interviews with me, the vice president talks about growing up himself and how his own family shapes his view. He talked about how his father really scolded some kids that he was hanging out with on the beach for making a derogatory comment about a gay couple he had sold a home to.

The vice president also talked about when he was thinking through all of this, as the question was being asked, he was thinking about his own father and he was thinking about one of his sons. How one day when they were in Delaware and saw a gay couple kissing goodbye. All of these family connections were going through his mind.

Bruce Grierson wrote this week’s cover story about Ellen Langer, a Harvard psychologist who has conducted experiments that involve manipulating environments to turn back subjects’ perceptions of their own age.Read more…